The blogger consensus out of last night’s AFIFest screening of David O. Russell‘s The Fighter is that Christian Bale is a lock for Best Supporting Actor, and that the film itself has a fighting chance for a Best Picture nomination. Mark Wahlberg, they’re saying, may not make the cut as a Best Actor contender, but that’s okay because the movie pleases and engages and looks like an across-the-board hit (i.e., snooties + Eloi).

I’ve sifted and sifted through Jeff Sneider‘s longish Wrap piece about the showing, and I think I’ve finally found the nub of it.

“As far as The Fighter‘s awards potential is concerned, Best Picture is more of a probability than a possibility now that most of the contenders have been screened for critics. Paramount is still testing everyone’s patience by holding True Grit like a carrot over critics’ heads, but give the studio credit for a shrewd marketing move with its AFI surprise.

“Best Actor is, to be perfectly honest, going to be difficult for Wahlberg, but I wouldn’t count him out just yet, as I expect the film to be warmly embraced by both critics and audiences alike. Like I said, it’s not a showy role for Wahlberg, and some of my colleagues argued last night that Bale was more of a co-lead, but Wahlberg was the 4th or 5th Departed cast member who I thought should’ve been nominated for an Oscar and yet his performance was the only one recognized by the Academy, so who knows?

“While Wahlberg may not give a ‘great, iconic screen performance,’ as former Variety critic Todd McCarthy wrote of Mickey Rourke‘s work in The Wrestler, his years of training and preparation for the role result in a surprisingly quiet and restrained performance that ranks amongst the best of Wahlberg’s career (I’m tempted to call it his best but Boogie Nights is pretty epic).”

Bale “might well walk away with the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor this year,” says In Contention‘s Kris Tapley. “He’s mercilessly precise, committed and authentic as Ward’s crack-addicted half-brother, Dickie Eklund, a former next-big-thing boxer who blew his chances and lives life vicariously through Ward. The film mostly concerns itself with that sibling relationship and finds its most profound notes of grace therein, and Bale is really something to behold throughout.

“I’d say we’re looking at a solid contender for a Best Picture nomination. The film played like gangbusters and I’ve heard from numerous critical minds responding likewise, so erase all doubt. The Fighter is here to play, and what a coup for Paramount to have this dual reveal to the populace and industry alike. It was smart to eschew the typical festival strategy. This is a film meant to hit and hit big.

The piece by Deadline‘s Pete Hammond doesn’t really say if he truly admired it. For me calling a film a “vivid and colorful crowd pleaser” feels like a slight hedge. A circus act with elephants and lions can be vivid and colorful, and crowds can be easy to please if that’s all you want to do (as opposed to accomplishing something really special and/or unique in terms of new territory).

“The crowd ate it up” — the film, Hammond means — “and seemed to be with Wahlberg all the way. The supporting cast is rich, too, including choice roles for Melissa Leo as Micky’s mother/manager, and Amy Adams as his tough bartender girlfriend. Bale is terrific. He’ll go up for supporting actor, while Wahlberg will go for lead. All have real shots for this vivid and colorful crowd pleaser.

“Although The Fighter could be classified as a boxing picture, it’s [essentially] a character study of two very different brothers and spends much of its time defining that rocky relationship,” Hammond adds.

Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson says Bale “risks going too far with his druggie extrovert, but he slowly wins us over. He seems to excel when he’s dieted and sweated out every ounce of fat on his frame. He should land a supporting nomination; it would be his first.

“Will The Fighter make the best picture top ten? If all goes right (reviews/box office/critics and guild prizes), it’s possible. [But] it’s the actors shine in this, and should be rewarded.”

Hollywood Elsewhere believes in the Toronto Film Festival-to-Oscar night cycle as much as anyone else, and probably more than most. But let’s reiterate once again, as I do every year at this time, that while Oscar night is the climax — the event that delivers the stamp of history — it mainly feels like an anti-climax, or has felt that way, it has seemed, to more and more readers because the final preferences of the slow-to-awaken Academy parochials are not (and never will be) the stuff that shakes the rafters.

The Oscars only ignite when a big shocker happens — Crash beating Brokeback Mountain, The Pianist taking the Oscar for Best Director and Best Updated Screenplay and nearly(?) toppling Chicago — or when history is made like The Hurt Locker‘s Kathryn Bigelow becoming the first woman to take the Best Director Oscar. Otherwise they mainly confirm what we’ve all been kicking around for months and have all known was coming, etc.

You want interesting? Exciting? It’s us. We’re it. Our daily advocating-and-arguing entanglement and the unruly storms that follow. Filmmakers and distributors and the general community of film lovers repped on this site, I mean, and others like it. People who care much, much more about movies, and for far more interesting and compelling reasons, than the lazy-ass Academy default-thinkers.

The Academy and the Oscars comprise the Big Classic Narrative…fine. And it’s obviously what drives the award-season economy and thank God for that, but we’re the show. Hell, we’re the payoff. Right now, here, tomorrow, next week, last month in Toronto and Telluride and Venice and what may or may not have happened last night during the AFI Fest showing of The Fighter .

The best thing about awards season — the thing that really and truly matters — is the debate and the rancor and (apologies for alluding to a certain 1957 Stanley Kramer film) the pride and the passion. For Don Logan it was “the bolt and the buzz…the sheer fuck-all of it,” and for people like me (and presumably the bulk of HE’s readership) it’s the movies and the conversation and the wrestling, even, about cinematic and cultural and political values that delivers the excitement and the “meaning” and the memories.

It’s the daily “this is what moves me” and therefore “this is who I am or who we might be or could be” that floats the boat. These are the days of judgment and celebration, and it doesn’t get any better than right now, this moment, the digital travelling roadshow that thousands (or tens of thousands) of us are pushing along in different ways.

The serious multitudes and the Really Big Money kick in when the critics groups and the nominations and finally the Oscar show itself occur — I obviously get that — and yet a little part of me groaned slightly when I read Sasha Stone‘s state of the race piece this morning. She’s my Oscar Poker partner and I love her, but she’s so spelled by Academy mythology you want to tap her on the shoulder or more appropriately give her a hug and say, “Sasha…it’s not about an ABC telecast next February, or those extremely nice and likable sheep who vote. It’s about you and me and all of us. We love the Oscars and the dough but let’s not forget what matters. We matter. We’re it. We’re the jugglers and acrobats and trapeze artists and lion-tamers. We are Jumbo.”

Or, to further belabor the point, the foreplay and the build-up are where the real fun is. The Oscars are the rote orgasm. I’m more of a Kama Sutra man myself.

Harrison Ford was deadpan amusing on Letterman Monday night, but reality may as well be faced: Morning Glory isn’t drawing universal hossanahs. And yet — and yet! — Salon‘s Andrew OHehir is totally down with it, and O’Hehir is no easy lay so put that in your pipe.

“Am I reading way too much symbolism and subtext into a brightly colored Hollywood comedy that rips off the Mary Tyler Moore Manhattan TV-girl story for about the 46th time?,” O’Hehir asks. “Maybe, kind of — but not really.

“Morning Glory is worth your attention amid the overcrowded fall movie calendar precisely because it was directed with love and imagination by Roger Michell, a talented British filmmaker who’s been kicking around the margins of the industry since he clicked with Notting Hill 11 years ago. This is a brash, lightweight backstage comedy that looks lovely, doesn’t insult its audience and uses its stars, both young and old, to terrific effect.

“Despite the presence of Harrison Ford and Diane Keaton, who are highly enjoyable as the dueling co-hosts who represent Rachel McAdams’ hail-Mary attempt to save a morning infotainment show called ‘Daybreak,’ the movie belongs to McAdams.

:She’s gotten to stardom a bit late, given the pitiless march of time for women in Hollywood (McAdams turns 32 this month), but after Sherlock Holmes and The Time Traveler’s Wife, this skillful Canadian comedienne seems determined to make the most of it. I use that old-fashioned noun for a reason, since McAdams has clearly gone to school on some of the great comic actresses of film and TV history. It’s invidious to compare young women to Audrey Hepburn, but McAdams has a dash of Audreyness, to go along with doses of Lucille Ball, Doris Day and, let us note, one of the greatest of all graceful WASP klutzes in movie history, who happens to be her co-star herein.

“It takes impressive command of voice, body and demeanor to play a character who’s as awkward and tightly wound as Becky Fuller, and more still to make her seem appealing rather than scary or desperate. OK, she is a little desperate; after Becky gets cashiered at a second-rate local morning show in New Jersey, her mom (Patti D’Arbanville, very good in a teensy role) gently tells her that her long-standing dream to work at the Today show is on the rocks. When she finally gets an interview with a New York studio exec (the ever-wonderful Jeff Goldblum, who as usual nails every line without appearing to care), she pitches him with so much up-with-people, believe-in-me, spring-loaded force she virtually topples from her chair. ‘Are you going to sing now?’ Goldblum asks.

“Indeed, McAdams is so much fun to watch it almost wouldn’t matter what happens in the movie, but Michell and screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna (The Devil Wears Prada) keep the pretty pictures, the R-rated dialogue and the backstage histrionics coming fast and furious.”

Earlier this afternoon I had about 15 minutes with Biutiful director-cowriter-producer Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu in the elegant, softly lighted lounge of Soho’s Mercer Hotel. I feel so conversant with Biutiful and so relaxed with Inarritu, having known him for eight or nine years, that I didn’t prepare questions. And so I naturally hemmed and hawed at first — brilliant. But we found a groove after a couple of minutes. What are the odds that Biutiful might capture the Best Foreign Language Oscar? You tell me.

These little videos are sloppy, slapdash — a far cry from the satisfying, comfortably slick values found on Movie City News. No editing, no trimming, no nothing — I just shoot and convert and put ’em up. But they’re honest.

“On top of the 16 minutes of new footage (or 7 minutes if you’ve already seen the Avatar special edition) which includes a brand new 5-minute opening on a Blade Runner-ish earth, there will be 47 minutes worth of unfinished / low resolution deleted scenes.” — from an 11.8 High-Def Digest story by Michael S. Palmer.

I spoke last night with King’s Speech star Colin Firth at the post-premiere party at the Royalton hotel. Since he was chatting with director Tom Hooper, who’d recently made it clear that he’s not happy with the Weinstein Co.’s recently-unveiled King’s Speech one-sheet, I asked Firth if he more or less shares Hooper’s view. His answer was basically “I think…well, yeah.” He also enthused that there’s light up ahead and that change may be afoot.

King’s Speech star Colin Firth outside Royalton Hotel, site of the post-premiere after-party.

Firth’s understandable intent was to tread lightly and not bring any further grief into the lives of Weinstein Co. marketers.

The problem with the poster is that it looks poorly Photo-shopped and AFM-ish. As I put it on 11.3, “Is it that hard to create a movie poster that makes it seen as if the lead actors actually posed together in the same realm?”

I mentioned to Firth that I thought it was fairly common for senior cast members to pose together during filming for ad/pub materials. “It is and we did,” Firth replied. He and Rush and Helena Bonham-Carter together, in makeup and in costume with Firth in some sort of British Naval uniform. So a lack of group photos wasn’t an issue.

Incidentally: Watching The King’s Speech at the Zeigfeld kicked things up, by the way. It plays just as enjoyably as it did during my first viewing (which was just prior to the Toronto Film Festival), but the sound at the Zeigfeld made it seem that much better. The bassy tones and sharp highs are heavenly in that theatre. Geoffrey Rush‘s voice — sharp and precise with cave-like bottoms — felt like a symphony in and of itself. First-rate sound is half the ballgame when presenting and enjoying a film, and yet it’s rare, far too rare, for a film to sound as good as The King’s Speech did last night on West 54th Street.

Also incidentally: All hail Deleon Tequila, the generous sponsor of last night’s party.